Stage Door News

Port Colborne: The Showboat Festival Theatre cancels or postpones the shows of its 2020 season

Thursday, April 23, 2020

Showboat Festival Theatre has been presenting professional theatre in southern Ontario for over 32 years. With a focus on Canadian content, we have been fortunate enough to present over 80 Canadian shows to an audience pushing one million patrons. It has been a wonderfully rewarding and joyous time.   

But now we are faced with the reality that the live theatre environment, for the foreseeable future, cannot exist as it once did prior to COVID-19. Our team has been diligently exploring each, and every, option on how we might present our 2020 season safely for the Showboat audience this coming summer.   

However, with social distancing and unknown future mitigation efforts, we cannot confidently welcome our 40,000 patrons, guest artists, technical crew, volunteers and partners safely into our theatre this summer – our first and only priority must be the safety of each and every member of our Showboat family.

To that end, it is with a heavy heart that we must announce the cancelation of our five main stage productions of our 2020 season.  

It is a tough decision, without a doubt, but we believe we have made the most responsible choice for our Showboat family. We take this step to ensure there is a bright future for Showboat beyond this summer. And when the world opens again, your theatre can return to the laughter and joy we have all enjoyed for many more years to come.   

In keeping with this forward and positive thinking, it is our goal to present our Season Topper GLORY DAYS! this September. We hope it will act as our musical kick off to the new era of Showboat.   

While we stand down and wait for the world to heal this summer, we wish to thank all the organizations and individuals who have been working alongside us to present our 2020 Season. They include our sponsors, donors, volunteers and local business partners.  

To all our patrons, thank you for supporting us all these years. We are truly grateful to you all.   

Now that we have made this difficult decision we will spend the next few weeks preparing a range of options for you and your tickets. I sincerely hope that you will consider converting your 2020 summer season tickets and subscriptions to our 2021 season. This option is the best way for you to continue your support of Showboat, be the first in line and guarantee your favourite seats.   

Other options to ponder while we prepare to reach out to you, may be to donate the value of your tickets to the theatre and we would then be pleased to offer you a tax receipt for the full amount.  Or, a third option is a full refund – no questions asked.  

I will be in touch with you in the coming weeks to share more about these options for your 2020 tickets and subscriptions, as well as share my excitement around building a totally Canadian playbill for the 2021 season including Sugar Road, Halfway There and Meet My Sister.   

It will be a Candian playbill of the highest order that will feature our wonderful Canadian artists and our great Canadian sense of humour.  

We will miss you all. Take care of one another, be good to yourselves and always look on the bright side of life …   

 

A note about the Box Office

To further safeguard our staff against the risk posed by COVID-19, we have taken steps to allow our box office staff to work from home.

At this time you can reach us by email only at boxoffice@showboattheatre.ca. We’ll get back on the phones as soon as we can, but at the moment, email is the way to go.

We remain committed to providing you with excellent customer service and look forward to being in touch with you over email. Please note that we are working with reduced box office staff and will do our best to get back to you in a timely manner.